Importance of text-only links?

[skirril]

Hello,

The last site i designed was mostly done with server-side scripting (php), with loads of tables inside each other, and a menu done with javascript.

Those (rather complex) tables replace framesets, so the site cannot be picked apart by search engines pointing to just a frameset.

At the bottom of the page there's a row of text only links, making the whole content available, even if javascript is disabled, and images are not displayed.

Are there any possibilities on improvement?

Skirril

[Nick_W]

Lose the tables?

Nick

[tedster]

If you lose the nested tables as much as possible and go to divs for layout, you may be able to move your copy higher in the HTML doc. Also you may improve the ratio of page copy to total document size - an important factor for ranking.

You titled this thread "Importance of text-only links?" so I assume that is a focus of yours - and it's a good one.

In many SEs the text in the link helps define the page that the link points to. An added improvement in serach returns can come by using title attributes in the anchor tags for those links, where the title equals the precisely keyworded title of the page being linked to.

So not it only matters that the links are text, but WHAT that text is exactly is a major factor.

I recently had an experience with the power of text links. Many researchers in the press do their "digging" in text-only mode and only switch to graphics if they feel they have a good candidate for their article. One of my clients is getting a feature article in a magazine because the reporter liked them in text-only mode.

[jeremy goodrich]

Many search engines will parse out the link text and give you different scoring for those links than links containing images and no text.

It may be a small or big difference in the end, but if it gives you the smallest bit of edge for placing your site in front of it's target market, by all means, do it.